Ce dossier, élaboré en collaboration avec un groupe de travail ad hoc au sein d’AGTER, se propose de présenter les mesures les plus significatives et les instruments originaux qui ont été conçus dans le cadre de la politique foncière rurale appliquée en France après 1945, ainsi que ses acteurs les plus emblématiques.

Les enjeux environnementaux, les questions relatives à la protection du foncier rural, aux autres usages de l’espace et à l’articulation entre politiques foncières urbaines, rurales et agricoles – enjeux qui se posent aujourd’hui avec grande acuité – ne seront pas traitées en détail dans le présent dossier, mais feront l’objet d’un dossier spécifique.

A presentation of the Land Office (Office Foncier), central piece of the innovative system imagined by Edgard Pisani, former Minister of Agriculture in France in the 1960s, to improve the management of agricultural lands. Pisani’s land project was part of the program of the Socialist Party for the elections of 1981, but once the Left came to power, it was quickly abandoned. While some practical arrangements may now seem to have aged a bit, his proposals are still overall of remarkable relevance.

[*An important matter for many countries: making land use rights secure*]
The surface area of farmland that is worked by someone other than the landowner adds up to a considerable amount in many countries, developed and developing . Ensuring the use rights of agricultural workers who are not landowners constitutes a fundamental matter for millions of farm producers.
Farming by someone other than the landowner, a labour practice which takes many different forms such as loans, rentals and (...)

In France, there is a system for regulating the land market that relies on the collaboration of the State and farmers’ organisations. This system, little known outside of this country’s borders, is called the Land Development and Rural Settlement Associations (Sociétés d’Aménagement Foncier et d’Etablissement Rural, SAFERs) and constitutes one of the key components of French "structures policy”. Under this “structures policy” umbrella falls not only all the policies for agricultural modernisation, (...)

[*Context: A long, symbolic and victorious peasant struggle*]
After 10 years of struggle against the expansion of the Larzac military camp, a result of the original and widely publicised non-violent action that generated large national and international support, the farmers on this French plateau obtained a historical victory in 1981 with the abandon of the military extension project.
It’s in this context that the SCTL, Société Civile des Terres du Larzac, (Larzac Land Trust) was created. (...)